With this study’s research questions now affirmed, that religious coping predicts faith maturity and hope moderates that relationship, careful consideration is given to theoretical underpinnings of the study objectives, implications of its findings, limitations of results obtained, and recommended applications of the knowledge uncovered. As prefaced at the start of this exploration, hope would seem highly valuable for pastoral counseling models and therapeutic interventions for Christian clients (Lester, 1995), but the scientific contexts for how best to engage as professionals in a caring hope-filled capacity via theory and practice may be unclear presently, given disparate meanings assigned to related principles (Capps, 2001; Miller &
Delaney, 2004). Although extensive thought and effort has been previously paid to the various conceptualizations on related spiritual, religious, and faith-oriented thought and measures and expanded over time, this study offers yet another vantage for examining these topics along with hope. This perspective is not offered without some constraint and reasonable temperance when recommending potential next steps in applying, reexamining, and further studying these
important matters.
Discussion
As mentioned previously, no study has conclusively linked religious coping, use of religious practice to address stress (Pargament, 1997), with faith maturity, the closeness perceived to God that produces altruism (Benson et al., 1993; Ciarrocchi et al, 2008), within a framework of hope; the identification of and motivation toward attaining goals (Snyder, 2002).
Unfortunately, this problem persists despite effort to the contrary via this study. The study demonstrates a strong linear relationship between positive religious coping and vertical faith
maturity that is moderated by both trait and state hope agency. With the intention of offering insight into psychologically-defined hope expressed via an adult Christian sample to better inform Christian pastoral counseling and clinical therapeutic interventions for Christian clients, this examination of correlations between religious coping and faith maturity successfully shows that the former does predict the later, but in relation to moderation of this relationship via state or trait hope as set forth by Snyder (2002) results were supportive yet with limited conditional effect. Regardless, significant findings are presented within the study that merit discussion and considerate contemplation.
Religious coping, having been shown to be a valid and extensively utilized psychological measure (Pargament, 2019), and faith maturity, having been validated (Piedmont & Nelson, 2001) and employed as a reliable construct for theological application and scientific use (Ciarrocchi et al., 2008), are shown herein to be highly correlative with a significant and predictive relationship. Thus, this study advances preceding religious coping and faith maturity research and related literature. Although some previously tested and well-established measures of hope (Snyder, 2002) also bear significance as moderators of this newly identified coping to maturity correlation relationship, more research would be beneficial; especially given the somewhat weak factorial relevance of hope on this predictive relationship. While the predictive nature of religious coping upon faith maturity can appear at first inspection to be primarily a theological curiosity for exploration purely as a religious construct, multiple and broad spiritual and psychological implications exist for the relationship in relation to religious coping and faith maturity. Likewise, the implications for trait agency, trait pathway, state agency, and state pathway are numerous in relation to this documented moderation and considerations in the psychology of religion, positive psychology, but primarily within hope theory. Prior to diving
deeper into such implications, a review of salient points from literature can preface those considerations.
While hope can be seen and applied in a purely Christian eschatological perspective (Moltmann, 1967), ministerial workers can broaden scope of care provided to enhance service deliverables to parishioners and clients with application of greater psychological principles when offering their distinctive and valuable contribution to human services (Rogers, 1950) by
honoring a multi-disciplinary mindset via integrative approaches (Agilkaya-Sahin, 2018) while purveying optimal hope (Capps, 2001). With a correlative relationship between religious coping and faith maturity documented via this study, questions remain as to how best clinicians and pastors can capitalize on this relationship and instill and maintain greater levels of hope as an important component of care (Yalom & Leszcz, 2005). Also, despite limited effect displayed in data regarding hope as a moderating factor, it would seem that agency-related interventions could merit particular focus in such considerations, and, per data generated and analyzed in this study, the applicability of both trait and state hope would appear to remain valid for
consideration in such endeavors as well.
Implications
Often the literature cited herein regarding hope theory and applications of the hope measures used in this study abound with correlational research, but very few of these studies or others that have gone without citation offer insights from program evaluations or treatment studies. So, again, while the theoretical potential to identify areas to incorporate beneficial relationships into the planning and executing counseling deliverables to Christians that
emphasize elemental hope for the purpose of improved therapeutic alliance and client outcomes clearly exists there seems to be little effort to develop and test such applications.
Recommendations that follow offer suggested means for advancing alliance and outcomes via additional research and possible intervention. However, with regard to religious coping
specifically, this study yet again demonstrates the versatility of applying this measure to varied topics and ranges of scales and quantifiable measures. Its predictive capacity on faith maturity, as a lesser used measure, may perhaps inspire relevance or applicability for use of this
faith-oriented measure in future research. All these sets of measures, each with subsets of additional measures, offer researchers and practitioners who consume, interpret, and employ this research for further study or daily client interaction many possible beneficial insights for extrapolation or utilization. Key implications on prior research and practice that stand out among literature cited include the following.
Religious Coping and Faith Maturity
Faith maturity increasing as religious coping increases is a take away that speaks directly to a central tenet of Pargament (1999) defining religion. For Pargament (1999) religion is “a search for significance (p. 11)” wherein effort is also made spiritually “to conserve significance once found or transform significance when necessary (p. 12),” and faith maturation can be seen as a manifestation of said conservation and transformation. Perhaps, more so than the intention behind the psychology of religion to separate and distinguish religion from spirituality, at least for the lives of Christians, faith is a tangible product of religious practice by which spirituality serves as the purpose of searching it out (Pargament, 1999) and thereby developing it via
religious action. In this context, these three constructs form a triad of belief and action where the results of this study bears great significance. Whereas, health is a distinct dimension contributed to by both religion and spiritual factors (Hill & Pargament, 2003), faith may be the measurable byproduct of religious use for coping when explored via spirituality. In such a dynamic, as
shown by Krause and Pargament (2018), where hope can be related to optimism, religious practice moderates the stress to hope relationship by use of benevolent religious reappraisal producing hope for the future; an implication that directly links hope to the concepts of religion and spirituality, but conceivably faith as well.
Hope Theory
In this study, hope was shown to have a limited, but statistically significant, moderating effect on the relationship between positive religious coping and faith maturity. This relationship provides some potential practical scenarios that may be helpful for the personal and spiritual development of individuals. Just as religious and psychological perspectives inform the link between hope, optimism, and fulfillment (Ciarrocchi et al., 2008), the theory of hope proposed by Snyder (2000; 2002) can also inform the study of faith, especially where goals and confidence integrate (Ciarrocchi et al., 2008). Similar to this study, the use of Snyder’s hope theory and Pargament’s religious coping with faith maturity resulted in religiosity predicting hope, both dispositional and state, while horizontal faith strongly predicted agency hope (Ciarrocchi et al., 2008). Those findings in combination with results now showing hope moderating the religious coping prediction of faith maturity offers greater insight into the religious, spiritual, faith, and hope continuum of consideration expanding existing literature with salient research findings relevant for any future research on this topics. With both state and trait agency hope highlighted in this study and prior literature, a focus on the cognitive capacities of religiously-motivated, faithful, and hope-filled individuals may merit greater interest and exploration.
Limitations
This convenience sample was obtained exclusively from a Christian university’s online psychology undergraduate and graduate students, and, although there is balanced distribution of
via multiple references points and relative representation to the larger population (The
Pew Research Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life, 2015a), the potential limitations for applying any findings to American Christians, in general, must be acknowledged. Likewise, as a Christian researcher, the limitation of my own potential bias in regard to any discussion and consideration of defining constructs, theories applied herein, or results obtained must also be acknowledged. Specific to avoiding sampling error and to curtail any potential limits to design and results from this study, effort was made to mimic and model the Pew Research
Center's Forum on Religion & Public Life samples and report findings on Christians in the United States as of 2010 (2015a; 2015b). Also, a disparity between gender representation, 15.81% male and 84.19% female, likely skewed results on the basis of gender.
Recommendations for Future Research
An immediate and rather obvious suggestion for future research would be to replicate this study on a broader sample in the wider Christian population not only in the United States but also abroad; any differing results could then be considered with regard to alternative impacts based on cultural and demographics factors. Exploring the predictive qualities of religious coping on hope measures directly and inversely is another consideration for future research in order to determine if state or trait hope precedes religion as a motivation for greater spirituality or enhanced faith. Similarly, a comparison of Synder’s hope measures with other measures of related hope and optimism in the context of religion’s predictive relationship to faith could reveal other potential moderates for consideration or application in hope-filled interventive practices by clinicians or pastors. Further, in relation to not only religious coping, faith maturity, and hope but also other theologically-supported or spiritually-focused measures, incorporation of measures at the start and finish of programming by pastors as well as intake and completion of therapy by
clinicians could prove to be helpful in determining intervention success.
Ultimately, a longitudinal study of baseline hope over the time spent cultivating religious practice and faith maturity could also prove useful to expand the psychology of religion and hope theory in relation to spirituality and faith maturation. For instance, could religious practices that reflect the maturing of faith, as seen by love of God or neighbor (Benson et al., 1993) be
measured longitudinally with or without the benefit of hopefulness? After all, as Fowler (1981) contended, the nature of faith is that of cognitive or ethical development process with maturation resembling other stages or processes of life. Without data collection and consideration over time studying the interplay between spirituality, religion, faith, and hope may be impossible. Although not precisely a limitation when researching these areas, the apparent lack of extensive qualitative data regarding these primary subjects may be a concern for some. Therefore, a study endeavoring to translate the often quantitative outputs of related measures and scale into a qualitative context or one that could combine both the quantitative and qualitative elements of research may offer greater insights on religious coping, faith maturity, and hope or related constructs.
Finally, as briefly mentioned in regard to study results using PROCESS model 2 (Hayes, 2018), the significance of variables for years lapsed as the W moderator with state agency and trait agency interchangeably as the Z moderator in process modeling with positive religious coping as the predictor and vertical faith maturity as the outcome bore results that were an unanticipated but notable occurrences within data output. These noteworthy and associated occurrences of variance in conditional effects for focal predictors with moderator values
indicated that the impact of hope agency may alter over time. The potential that hope decreases in Christians as years lapse since their profession of faith or conversion is a very distinct area for future study, and one that I would encourage.
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